The Shattered Tablets: Parshat Ki Tissa The Open Book @ Romemu
DC
ByDianne Cohler-Esses

Yasher koach Asher Shibartem/ Congratulations that you broke them!

Comparison Exercise between the first and second tablets. The first tablets (see first text below) were given before the sin of the Golden Calf. The second (see second text) was given afterwards. Read carefully:

  • What are the differences?
  • Make a chart listing the differences. ​
  • What do you think accounts for these differences?

First Tablets

Exodus 32:15-19 Now Moshe faced about to come down from the mountain, the two tablets of the Testimony
in his hand, tablets written on both their sides, on this-one, on that-one they were written;
16 and the tablets were God's making, and the writing was God's writing, engraved upon the tablets.
17 Now when Yehoshua heard the sound of the people as it shouted, he said to Moshe: The sound of war is in the camp!
18 But he said: Not the sound of the song of prevailing, not the sound of the song of failing, sound of choral-song is what I hear!
19 And it was, when he neared the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, Moshe's anger flared
up, he threw the tablets from his hands and smashed them beneath the mountain.


Second Tablets

Exodus 34:1 Then YHVH said to Moshe: Carve yourself two tablets of stone like the first-ones, and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets which you smashed.

4 So he carved two tablets of stone like the first-ones.

to Mount Sinai, as YHVH had commanded him, and he took in his hand the two tablets of stone.

Biblical Translations by Everett Fox-- The Schocken Bible

http://toby.weebly.com/uploads/2/7/4/8/2748917/everett_foxxstorah.pdf

Why did Moshe Shatter the Tablets?

Midrash Shemot Rabah 43:1
What did Moshe do? He took the Luchot from the hand of the Holy One, blessed be He, in order to calm His anger. To what is this compared? To a king who sent someone to betroth a woman through a middleman. She went and acted inappropriately with another man. The middleman, who was innocent, what did he do? He took the ketubah which the king gave him to betroth her and tore it. His intention being that it is better she is judged as an unmarried woman than a woman who is married.What Moshe did was the same. When the Jewish people sinned, he took the Luchot and broke them, so as to say that if they would have seen their punishment, they would have not sinned.

Midrash Avot DeRabi Natan chapter 2
He looked at them and saw that the words had flown out of them. He said, “How can I give the Jewish people the Luchot with no substance? Rather, I will grab them and break them.”

The Value of the Shattered Tablets.

Talmud Tractate Shabbat 87a
We have learned: Three things Moshe did of his own accord and HaShem agreed to his judgment… He broke the Luchot. What was his reasoning? He said, “The Passover Offering which is only one of the 613 mitzvot, the Torah says, ‘any strange person (idol worshiper) should not eat from it;’ the Luchot contain the entire Torah and the Jewish people are transgressors, how much more so [that it should not be given to them]!”
How do we know that HaShem agreed with his judgment? For it is written, “(The first Luchot) which you have broken” (Shemot 34:1), and Reish Lakish said that the word “asher” (which) can be juxtaposed to mean “Yasher Kochacha (congrats) for having broken it.”

Rashi: For he was moved to smash the Tablets before their very eyes, as it is written (above, Deut. 9:17), "smashing them before your eyes," and the Holy One, blessed be He, was of like mind with him, for it is written (Ex. 34:1), "which you shattered"—the more power to you (Yasher Koach!)

Talmud Tractate Bava Batra 14b
Rav Huna said… the [full] Luchot and the broken Luchot lay [side by side] in the Aron (Holy Ark).

Questions:

  • Why do you think the last midrash on the page says that the broken and whole tablets lay side by side?
  • Have you ever broken something on purpose? Why?
  • Does that help you understand why Moshe would break the tablets?

Suggested Activities:

  • Create a chart comparing the differences between the two sets of tablets.
  • Have your students create something and then ask them to destroy it. See what happens. Use their reactions to help them understand Moshe breaking the tablets.
  • Ask your students to tell stories about something important to them that they broke or somehow was broken. See what themes from your study that day you might tie into their own story to help them expand their understanding of shattering/brokenness.

Halakhah le-Maaseh-- Practical Implications (From Aggadah to Halakhah, from story to guidance for life).

Tell your students that according to the rabbis Moshe broke the tablets on the 17of Tammuz, a fast day, that he went back up to Sinai retrieve the whole tablets on the 1st of Elul and on Yom Kippur he returned to the Children of Israel with the second tablets signifying forgiveness. Ask them how Moshe coming back down the mountain with the new tablets relates to Yom Kippur.

Could it be that God is what is unattainable within all that we attain? [Perhaps] in order to be understood by the creature, God’s Word and commandments had to burst into pieces so that the pieces could make it perceptible, that is to say, human.”

Edmund Jabes